Page 38 of The Off Limits Captain
Ryan points his stick toward the corner, resetting the drill. Evan goes, but not immediately. A beat late. Long enough that everyone understands he chose to obey.
I write: Obedience can still be defiance if timed correctly.
Then I cross out obedience because it sounds like a graduate seminar and I refuse to become the kind of woman who ruins hockey with vocabulary.
Evan wins the next puck battle, eats contact from Colt, spins out, and sends the breakout pass exactly where Ryan wanted it.
Perfect execution.
Zero apologies.
Ryan taps the ice once with his stick.
Acknowledgment, not praise.
Evan salutes him.
Colt laughs. Zach does not. Kowalski looks as if he has never found anything funny in his life and does not plan to start today.
I can feel the shape of the article landing down there. Some players will think I wrote the truth. Some will think I handed strangers a weapon. Both groups may be right.
The next drill starts. Zach drives a little too hard through Ryan on the boards. Legal in practice, technically. Pointed, definitely. Ryan absorbs it, pins him for one beat, then lets him go.
No words.
Zach skates away with his jaw tight.
Colt says something to him at the blue line. Zach shakes his head.
This is what a room sounds like after a story hits: no raised voices, no dramatic rupture, just all the normal motions carrying a little extra weight.
And Ryan in the middle, trying to keep the whole thing moving.
My phone buzzes.
Unknown number.
For one stupid second, I think it is him. It is not.
Dad: Saw your article. Call me before this gets worse.
A second text arrives before I can put the phone away.
Dad: Hartley people are asking why my daughter is antagonizing the team they are trying to work with.
The words turn the arena colder from two stories up. Hartley people have been close to the team for months, always speaking in that polished civic language men use when they want access to sound like vision. I have avoided the edges of it because I know exactly how many rooms my father’s name can open and how fast those doors close on my fingers.
Ryan is on the ice below me, trying to hold a room together after I put something sharp in the middle of it.
My father is somewhere in California, still believing every sharp thing belongs to him if he paid for it.
I turn the phone facedown against my thigh.
Too late, Dad.
Worse already has skates.
When I try to approach the locker room after practice, security stops me.
